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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

TUCSON, AZ -- The
conversation we're all having about immigration reform isn't new.
Congress has been talking -- and talking plenty -- about how to fix our
broken immigration system for a long time. I've been proud to represent
you in that conversation since I got to Congress, and now that we're on
track for a real bill I'm proud to speak up for your concerns in
Washington. But that's not all I'm doing.

On
Jan. 28, I spoke at a great rally in Phoenix with some of our strongest
allies in this fight. Groups such as Mi Familia Vota and Promise
Arizona have spent years on the ground making immigration reform
possible, and at this crucial moment, they're fighting to make the final
product something we can be proud of, not just something we can barely
live with. I'm happy to lead that fight on your behalf and I hope you'll
join me in keeping up the pressure. Now is the time to make your voice
heard.

I'm
getting ready to introduce a whole package of border and immigration
bills during the first week of February. We can't just have our say in
the press, although that is an important part of our strategy. We need
to be on record in Congress to remind everyone that immigration reform
can't just be a code word for a triple-layer fence and Arpaio-style
family raids. We have to improve our ports of entry to speed
cross-border commerce and create jobs all across the country. We have to
protect public land in our border areas because if Republicans get
their way our wildlife preserves and national parks will be a thing of
the past. We can't let that happen.

Your
needs, your values and your families are what are most important in
this fight. Immigration reform isn't about me -- it's about you, and
it's about what kind of country we want to build. Our future can be
about a more realistic, more tolerant and more inclusive society, or it
can be about what a few loud conservative activists think "Real America"
looks like. If you agree with me about which one you prefer, make your
voice heard. I say it a lot, and it's always true: democracy doesn't
work without you.

Please
spread the word. People don't know how important this is unless they
hear from friends and people they trust. Thanks so much for all you do.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

So What Do We Do Now? Latinos and the 2nd Obama Admnistration By Charles Kamasaki, National Council of La Raza

For perhaps the first time in history, the Latino vote is widely acknowledged to have proven decisive in a Presidential election. How should the community's advocates react? The natural tendency is to push for more across the board, hoping that the community's greater political power will automatically translate into public policy wins.

While surely there's some truth to this assumption, it won't be easy. Getting anything done in today's highly-charged, deeply polarized environment is very difficult. And paradoxically, the prominence of the Hispanic vote may actually reduce the incentive for some partisans on both sides of the aisle to enact policies their political opponents might get credit for.

As Latino advocates consider what to do next, it would behoove us to step back, take a hard look at the current landscape, and make some strategic, intentional decisions about where we allocate our collective advocacy resources. Let's start by taking a hard look at what just happened.

First, the good news: the absolute number of Hispanic voters in 2012 increased substantially over 2008 - a significant milestone given that overall turnout probably went down a bit.[1] As many as three-quarters of Latino voters supported the winner, President Obama, according to the Impremedia/Latino Decisions poll, which is likely more reliable than the media consortium's exit poll.

Nine newly-elected Representatives will join the Congressional Hispanic Caucus next year, and Ted Cruz will join Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez in the Senate. To the surprise of many, a ballot initiative on in-state tuition for undocumented students won a major victory in Maryland. And this hasn't gone unnoticed. Dozens of reporters, politicians, and pundits have noted the community's growing clout, often ably assisted by press events and news releases issued by Latino advocates.

However, one of the biggest dangers advocates face is believing our own spin. Without in any way denigrating the progress we've made as a result of major civic engagement efforts by many of our organizations, if we parse the data carefully there are some dark clouds hidden behind the silver lining.

On the electoral front, a major long term concern is that the Hispanic electorate is not keeping up with the community's population growth. "Straight line" growth - that is, replication of the 27-28% increases in actual voters that took place over the last two cycles - should have produced about 12.4 million Hispanic voters this year, but it appears that total Latino 2012 turnout will be below 12 million.[2]

A related concern is that the talk about the importance of the Hispanic vote was not matched by commensurate investments in expanding the electorate. As a result, hardly a dime was invested in nonpartisan citizenship or voter registration work in non-battleground states like California, Texas, New York, Illinois, or New Mexico, which have the greatest concentrations of potential - but not yet actual - Latino voters.

On the policy front, the ideological make-up of Congress hardly changed at all, and some key allies like DREAM Act sponsors Richard Lugar in the Senate and Howard Berman in the House, won't be returning next year. This means that translating the community's growing electoral power into policy change will remain difficult at best.

Allocating one's advocacy resources involve inevitable trade-offs: short-term vs. long term, pushing the envelope vs. settling for a compromise, asserting parochial interest vs. working in broader coalitions, and so on. There are no "right" answers, and obviously every institution and advocate will do what they have to do on their own top priorities. But events require us to concentrate collectively on at least two major fronts right now.

The first involves imminent debates over how to address the "fiscal cliff." Representing a community with both an immediate need for jobs and long-term human capital investments, Hispanic advocates should push for some form of immediate job creation effort and fight equally hard to protect key education and workforce programs. Achieving these goals likely will require both substantial new revenue and some entitlement reform over the long-term, meaning pitched battles with some conservatives on taxes and uncomfortable discussions with some traditional allies on entitlements.

The second is immigration reform. While it's axiomatic that most of us will be calling for reform, there are at least three things we haven't always done that we need to do now.

One is greater outreach to those not yet persuaded that reform is necessary or desirable. Enactment of a bill will require at least 30-35 Republican votes in the House and five-to-seven in the Senate. Only if we work on a bipartisan basis using all of our collective resources are we likely to achieve these goals.

Two, we need to continue to hold the Administration's feet to the fire, including demanding expansion of deferred deportation to cover, at a minimum, the parents and siblings of U.S. citizen children.

But three, and this is the hard part, at the appropriate time we'll need to be prepared to compromise when the time comes.

As immediate developments require a focus on these and other short term policy priorities, it will be equally important to focus on some crucial long term interests. Arguably the most important of these is growing the Latino electorate.

While we can and should celebrate the 11-12 million Hispanics who voted, out of slightly over 14 million registered, we cannot forget the 10 million Latino citizens of voting age who are not yet registered to vote, a group that will grow by over 500,000 per year. There are certain inherent challenges: this population is disproportionately young and low-income, has relatively low levels of educational attainment, and is highly mobile. In addition, voter ID laws and other artificial barriers are not likely to go away soon.

Charles Kamasaki is Executive Vice President of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). He has worked for NCLR for the last 32 years; his first role with organization was at a South Texas-based program where he specialized in supporting affordable housing construction. He has since headed their Office of Research, Advocacy and Legislation and directed their Policy Analysis Center. Prior to working for the NCLR, he specialized in providing elected officials with technical assistance in housing and community development. He has held leadership positions with the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and the National Immigration Law Center. Charles is the co-author, with Raul Yzaguirre, of the seminal paper, "Black-Hispanic Tensions: One Perspective," Journal of Intergroup Relations (Winter 1994-5) and is currently taking a one-year partial leave of absence to write a book on immigration policy and politics. He can be reached at ckamasaki@nclr.org.

Friday, November 2, 2012

Latino voters will probably help reelect President Obama, but what will they get in return?

By
Adrian Perez, Associate Editor, Journal On Latino Americans

Yes.It is true.The majority of Latino voters who will participate in this year’s
Presidential election will vote for President Barack Obama.Most will not vote for him because he has
been good for Latinos, they will be voting for him because the Republicans have
almost totally alienated Latino voters.

Like
many other Latinos, I supported Obama’s election in 2008, not because he would
have been the first President of color, but because his speeches told us there
was a much brighter light if we elected him to lead the free world.As an independent voter, I studied his and
Senator John McCain’s messages to see which would better serve the Latino
community and hands down, Obama was a cut above.So what happened?

President
Barack Obama has been a disappointment for Latinos in his policies and broken
promises that once stirred support and a drive for change in the 2008
Presidential election.The country has
never been more divided with partisan politics playing a key role in how
Latinos, documented or undocumented, are perceived.Had the President stuck to his promises and demonstrated
true leadership by standing up to racist attitudes toward Latinos and address
the undocumented worker issue in a more prompt and humane level, support for
his reelection would have remained or exceeded what he experienced in 2008.

I
was present at the 2008 National Council of La Raza annual convention in San
Diego, California, where Obama promised that immigration reform would be a
priority in his first year as President.Instead, his immigration policies of the last 4 years have resulted in
the largest number of undocumented Latino deportations occurring, many without
due process, which split thousands of families.

Some
have argued that it hasn’t been the President’s fault.Really?The Department of Homeland Security is under his rule and he appointed
former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano to establish and implement the most
cruel and inhumane approaches of deportation, where in many cases children had
to be placed in foster homes or left with a single parent to care for
them.So why did Obama wait to take
action until it was time to run for reelection?

As
an olive-branch to the Latino community, Obama offered a policy this year, protecting
the millions of undocumented children who were brought here by their parents, an
opportunity not to be deported if they self-identified themselves as undocumented.The problem with that policy is the
Department of Homeland Security will know where these children are and if the
policy is not extended, they will be deported.

Governor
Mitt Romney is no saint either, making it clear he would deport all
undocumented residents, including children, unless they entered the military.Unfortunately, they are not his policies as
much as they are the Republican Party’s policies.

Unless
real Latino leadership in the U.S. stands up to the winner of this year’s
Presidential winner, we can expect more of the same.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

In 1998 Harry Pachon and Rudy de la Garza wrote a report for the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute titled "Why Pollsters Missed the Latino Vote - Again!"
in which they argued that polls across California failed to accurately
account for Latino voters in their samples, and that pre-election polls
statewide were fraught with errors as a result. Pachon and de la Garza
argued that "mainstream" pollsters failed to account for Latinos for
three primary reasons: 1) their sample sizes of Latinos were far too
small; 2) their Latinos samples were not representative of the Latino
population within the state; and 3) they were not interviewing Latinos
in Spanish at the correct proportions. THIS WAS 14 YEARS AGO (yes I am screaming).

And
now the worst offenders might be the newest batch of national polls are
attempting to estimate the national Obama-Romney horse race numbers.
Monday October 22, Monmouth University released a poll
in which Romney leads Obama 48% to 45%. Among Latinos, they report
Obama leads by just 6 points - 48% to 42%. These numbers are such
extreme outliers that even Romney campaign surrogates would have a hard
time believing them. While Monmouth is the most recent, there have been
many national polls with equally faulty numbers among Latinos.

Keep
that 48 to 42 number in your head and let's compare across a variety of
recent polls of Latino voters. As a matter of self-interest, we'll
start with four recent impreMedia-Latino Decisions tracking polls in
October. The last four polls released by IM/LD have found the Latino
vote nationally at 71-20; 67-23; 72-20; 73-21. Don't like those? NBC/Telemundo have released two polls in October of Latinos, putting the race at 70-25, and 70-20 just before that. And then there was the Pew Hispanic Center poll 10 days ago which had Obama 69-21 over Romney, and just before that CNN did a poll of Latinos putting the national vote at 70-25.
Okay - that's eight national polls of Latino voters in the month of
October and the average across all eight is 70.3% for Obama to 21.9% for
Romney.

Let's
examine how these faulty Latino numbers create problems with the
overall national estimates. Afterall, Latinos are estimated to comprise
10% off all voters this year. If Latinos are only leaning to Obama
48-42, that +6 edge among 10% of the electorate only contributes a net
0.6 advantage to Obama (4.8 for Obama to 4.2 for Romney). However, if
instead Obama is leading 70.3 to 21.9 that +48.4 edge contributes a net
4.8 advantage to Obama (7.0 to 2.2), hence the national polls may be
missing as much as 4 full points in Obama's national numbers.

Let's break the numbers down a bit more to see if the math adds up, as Bill Clinton is so fond of saying...

Looking
at the Monmouth Poll, overall they give Romney a +3 edge nationally, 48
to 45. According to their crosstabs by race and ethnicity (posted here),
the first tab below shows the data as collected and reported by the
Monmouth Poll, including their estimates of the share each racial group
will comprise of the electorate. If you take the vote percentages for
each candidate times the share of the electorate that Monmouth gives
each group, you can arrive at the contribution that each racial group
makes towards the overall support numbers for each candidate.

Assuming
the data as reported by Monmouth, Latinos would add 5.8 points to Obama
and 5.0 point to Romney, a net edge of 0.8 points towards Obama.
However, in tab 2, we plug in the 8-poll average among Latinos as
reported above, 70.3 to 21.9. Here, we see Latinos contribute 8.4
points to Obama and 2.6 to Romney, a net edge of 5.8 points towards
Obama. With this adjustment, that 5 point swing in the overall national
data towards Obama takes what was a +3 .6 advantage for Romney and
turns it into a +1.5 advantage for Obama, 47.6 to 46.1. This is the
exact story of the 2010 Nevada data in which poll after poll showed
Angle ahead of Reid, and Latinos only slightly breaking to Reid. On
Election Day Reid won by 5 points, an 8-point swing from the poll
average, and he carried Latinos 90-to-10.

However,
we might also look at the Monmouth (or any of the national polls) data
among Blacks and expect they have underestimated the Black vote for
Obama. Rather than carrying 82% of the African American vote, a more
realistic prediction is that Obama will win 92% (or more) of the African
American vote. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed 94% of Blacks
planning to vote for Obama and 0% for Romney. If we add 10 points to
the Black vote for Obama - an adjustment I doubt anyone would disagree
with - we find a full additional point in favor of Obama nationally,
48.7% to 46.1%.

Dozens
of polls this year are making these exact same errors that Harry Pachon
and Rudy de la Garza pointed out 14 years ago. And by the way, their
report title carried the phrase "Again!" because they pointed out that
polls in California in 1994 and 1996 had made similar mistakes in
underestimating the Latino vote.

If
these mistakes are being made nationally where Latinos comprise an
estimated 10% of all voters, they are even worse in statewide polls in
Nevada, Florida, Colorado and Arizona where Latinos comprise an even
larger share of all voters. In Florida Latinos are estimated at 17% of
all voters. If you are badly mis-calculating the candidate preference
among 17% of the electorate (that's 1 out of every 6 voters), then the
entire statewide estimates are wrong. A PPP poll out yesterday
in Florida had Romney leading 49 to 46 among Latinos in Florida, and
overall Romney was ahead 48 to 47. The PPP poll likely had around 130
Hispanic respondents, all interviewed via robotic IVR method, which has
notoriously low and problematic response rates among Latinos. A Latino Decisions October poll showed Florida Latinos backing Obama 61 to 31.

Understanding,
and accurately polling the Latino electorate is important not just for
the sake of getting a correct portrait of Latino voters, but because
they are such a large part of the overall electorate that "missing the
Latino vote" ultimately results in missing the true vote of the entire
electorate, whether in a swing state, or nationally.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

(CNN)
-- Sometimes a story comes along that is so utterly ridiculous that, as
a commentator, your first instinct is to deal with it tongue-in-cheek.

And
so it is with Mitt Romney's videotaped remarks to a roomful of donors
at a fundraiser in May in Boca Raton, Florida. The GOP presidential
candidate appears to say that he wishes he were Latino because he thinks
it would be "helpful" to his quest and give him a "better shot" at the
presidency.

Referring to his father, George, Romney told the audience:

"My
dad, as you probably know, was the governor of Michigan and was the
head of a car company. But he was born in Mexico ... and had he been
born of Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot at winning this. But he
was unfortunately born to Americans
living in Mexico. He lived there for a number of years. I mean, I say
that jokingly, but it would be helpful to be Latino."

I'm
tempted to respond with this: "Mitt Romney thinks it would be helpful
if he were Latino. Well, Mitt, I'm Latino. And I think it would be
helpful to me if I were worth $250 million. Wanna switch?"

Or,
given President Barack Obama's heavy-handed immigration policies, with
this: "What Mitt Romney doesn't realize is that if he were Mexican,
there's a 94.6% chance that he would've already been deported by his
opponent."

Romney's
comments are clearly absurd, and so it's hard to take them seriously.
Did the rich white guy really claim to want to be Latino because he
thought it would help him win the presidency?

That's strange. Being Latino didn't seem to help Bill Richardson.

The
former New Mexico governor ran for president in 2008, and he didn't get
beyond the New Hampshire primary. Also, by Romney's logic, you would
think that we've had a whole slew of Latinos elected president; there
hasn't been a single one -- if you don't count Jimmy Smits playing
President-elect Matt Santos on the final season of "The West Wing."

Romney
should quit while he's ahead. Statistically, he has the golden ticket.
He's a rich white male, and they're overrepresented in the exclusive
club of the 44 individuals to ever serve as president. Barack Obama is
an exception, and even he satisfies two of three characteristics: rich
and male.

But,
if Mitt really wants to get in touch with his inner Mexican, I think
he'll find that it's not all churros and chocolate or pinatas and pan
dulce. You see -- and you might find this hard to believe, Mitt -- but
there is still a lot of discrimination in this country against Latinos
as whites hunker down and try to hold on to what they have in the face
of changing demographics.

For
instance, Romney has two Harvard degrees, and so do I. But I'll go out
on a limb here and guess that he never had anyone suggest that he was
only admitted to that prestigious university because of affirmative
action. Or that he is frequently told, as I am, to "go back to Mexico"
-- which is ironic, given that, since I'm the grandson of a Mexican
immigrant and Romney is the son of a Mexican immigrant, the GOP
presidential candidate is one generation closer to the motherland than I
am.

Yet, as difficult as it is, we must take Romney's comments seriously. There are three reasons that they're troubling.

First,
judging from the videotape, when Romney suggested that his path to the
White House would have been covered in rose petals if only he had been
born Mexican, the crowd loved it. What are they thinking?

Are
these the kind of people who tell themselves that their sons and
daughters would have gotten into Yale or Princeton if some black kid
hadn't taken their spot? Do they really believe that racial and ethnic
minorities have it easy in this country? And if so, what country are
they living in?

Second,
if you look at the rest of Romney's remarks -- about the 47% of
Americans who pay no taxes and "who are dependent upon government, who
believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a
responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to
health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it" -- he makes a good
point. Many Americans do have an entitlement mentality, and it's a real
problem.

Where
Romney went wrong is that the sense of entitlement isn't limited to
those on government aid. It includes the kind of fat cat donors who were
in the audience. They get tax breaks and corporate subsidies. They
raise their kids to think they're entitled to not do the jobs that
immigrants wind up doing. Romney scolded those who think they're
entitled, and then he seemed to wink at the audience and tell them:
"present company excluded."

Lastly,
it's hard to come up with a better example of an American who sees
himself as a victim with a sense of entitlement than Mitt Romney. Think
about what he said. This was no joke.

Romney
sounds frustrated. By suggesting that he'd have a better chance at
winning this election if he were Latino, Romney is playing the victim.
Poor me, I had the misfortune to be born a white male. It's clear that
he thinks he was entitled to a much smoother path to the White House.

Is Romney able to fix what's broken with America? Or are people like Mitt Romney what's broken with America?

Ruben
Navarrette is a CNN contributor and a nationally syndicated columnist
with the Washington Post Writers Group. Follow him on Twitter:
@rubennavarrette

Thursday, September 13, 2012

We saw this week the Democratic National Convention and its sea of diversity among its delegates on the Convention floor, a very stark contrast to the Republican National Convention faces we saw on television the week before. But behind the scenes, I see a very different picture regarding the grooming of Latino leadership for the future of American politics.

The Democrats paint a party of the “people” who represents the last frontier to protect what’s left of the American middle class. At the DNC, they showcased their Latino leadership. We saw my mayor, Antonio Villariagosa, prominently displayed as the chairman of the Convention. Julian Castro, the mayor of San Antonio, is billed as the rising Latino star in the Democratic Party.

The RNC, on the other hand, spotlighted their chosen ones too: Congressman Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, and Governor Susanna Martinez of New Mexico. So we ask: “Which political party is really grooming our future Latino leadership?” My short answer is….the Republican party. Here is why: The Democrats, with all their fanfare of diversity, really has no real infrastructure on a national or state level focused on grooming Latino leadership. Since Latinos just happen to make a large number in their party, really by default they have taken some leadership roles. And if you think about it, Democratic Latinos are not really in too many high level positions like governors or senior ranking congresspersons, considering the number of Latinos in the party.

The reason is simple. The Democratic Party has a “union” mentality when it comes to grooming its next leadership. You have to start practically at birth as a member of the Party and promote your way up the ladder, until it’s your time to eventually lead. Being from California, that process and mentality is obvious with the State Democrats and the union machine. So what real chance does a young Latino have of high level leadership in the Democratic Party, if they don’t follow this “promotional” leadership process…none.

The Republicans surprisingly enough, invested last year, on the national level into a fund specifically to identify and groom 100 top Latino leaders for the Party. Impressive? Well, the fund only started with less than 2 million dollars, which in today’s economy is not much, but it’s a start. For the first time we heard not just one but two Latinos, Congressman Marco Rubio and Governor Susanna Martinez on the short list for Vice President! We recently saw Congressman Ted Cruz come in and shock everyone with his win in Texas. He had some support (money) of the RNC too.

I believe the Republican party has the better chance of grooming and possibly delivering Latino political leaders that actually will not only look like us, but also represent us appropriately. Believe it or not, Latinos’ beliefs are very similar to those of the GOP: family, fiscal conservancy, small government, and support of entrepreneurship and business. Yes, I know, shocking but very true. With our potential voting power, Latinos can vote into office (or take out of office) the right candidate to represent and act on our legislative needs. What is good for Latinos is good for America…and what is good for America is good for Latinos!

The Latino community must continue investing in ourselves and believe that our time is here now. We must support leadership-training beginning with our youth, and support national organizations like the National Hispanic Institute, based out of Texas, who go after our cream of the crop of Latino youth and train them to think like leaders and entrepreneurs. At the end of the day, it is our responsibility, no one else’s, to train, groom and support America’s future leadership! Let’s all take this call for action….it is really the American thing to do, no que no?

Jaime Rojas Jr. worked for The White House’s Office of Public Liaison and Latino outreach for President Bill Clinton, and for The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. He is also the former President and CEO of the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce (CHCC) and he wrote his first book in 2011 titled, “The Conservative’s Pocket Constitution.” Follow Jaime on Twitter @Jaime_Rojas

The sudden
announcement of major ethical violations by Brooklyn power broker Vito
Lopez by the NYS Assembly of which he has been a member since 1984 took
everyone by surprise. It was widely known that he was being investigated
for funny business concerning his nonprofit, the Bushwick Ridgewood
Senior Citizens Council and its very very well-paid Director, his long-time girlfriend, Angela Battagli. But, to be severely censured by the Assembly for the sexual harassment of his female staff? No one really saw that coming!

This
situation makes it obligatory to point out that, despite his surname, he
is an Italian-American and not a Latino (although I understand that he
claims he has a grandparent from Spain). However, depending on his
immediate political fortunes, and calls for his resignation will no
doubt emerge as the county's district leaders prepare to meet as you
read this, this could have a profound impact on the nature of Latino
politics and politics in general in Brooklyn. But ever since Lopez was
diagnosed with Leukemia in 1993 and treated for the recurrence of cancer
in 2010, the Brooklyn political class has, in many cases begrudgingly,
learned over the years not to count him out prematurely.

His loss of
his chairmanship of the powerful Housing Committee, of his seniority and
eligibility to hold any leadership positions in the Assembly severely
undercut his influence in that body, and were made all that more
humiliating by his being barred from, get this, hiring any staff under
21 years of age or employing any interns. Besides his continued
viability as a state legislator, questions will no doubt quickly arise
as to his fitness to continue as Chair of the Kings County Democratic
Party (his predecessor in this position, by the way, was Clarence Norman
Jr., who is currently serving a prison sentence for three felony counts
of accepting illegal campaign contributions).

The recent
Democratic primary in Congressional district 7 largely covering northern
Brooklyn, where incumbent Nydia Velazquez readily beat back three
challengers, was generally viewed as a political battle between
Velazquez and surrogates for Vito Lopez (some even speculated that all
three of her challengers were put up by Lopez). The downfall of Lopez
would leave a political vacuum that favors a stronger local role for
politicians like Velazquez and the network of progressive reformers she
is associated with, whyich now includes term-limited Councilmember and
former Lopez chief of staff Diana Reyna. While it is difficult to
determine what will happen to the leadership of the county organization
at this point, the political demise of Lopez also means the at least
temporary weakening of the King County Democratic political machine.

This would
have immediate repercussions for the Dilan political family. Two strong
allies of Lopez are State Senator Martin Dilan and his son Councilmember
Erik Martin Dilan (as well as the younger Dilan's former chair of staff
and now Assemblyman Rafael Espinal). Senator Dilan is currently being
challenged in next month's Democratic primary by reformer Jason Otaño,
who is backed by Velazquez. Councilmember Dilan is term-limited and his
seat will be open, and it looks like Make the Road staffer Jesus
Gonzalez (who recently lost in a squeaker to Espinal for the Assembly)
will be making a run at that open seat. Then there is scandal-ridden
Bronx Assembywoman Naomi Rivera's current boyfriend, Tommy Torres, who
was reportedly planning a run to replace Reyna in the City Council with
the backing of Lopez.

There are
also the Latino politicos further south in the borough in the Sunset
Park area. These are Assemblyman Felix Ortiz and Councilmember Sara
Gonzalez. Ortiz is a politically shrewd character who will no doubt
maneuver his way well through whatever party leadership changes occur,
insulated in part by his relatively new role as head of the Assembly's
Puerto Rican/Hispanic Legislative Task Force and its Somos El Futuro
Conferences, and his role as President of the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators.
Councilmember Gonzalez is up for reelection next year in a redistricted
district and her main concern will be negotiating a relationship with
the area's growing Asian population and White gentrifiers.

Will this
opening in the leadership of the Brooklyn Democratic machine create an
opportunity for a greater Latino role in running party politics in the
borough? Will Brooklyn White ethnic leaders like Borough President Marty
Markovitz and the Black leadership see this as a chance to more fully
partner with the county's growing Latino electorate? Will they see this,
as one witty boricua commentator told me, as an opportunity to finally replace Vito with a real Latino in place of a Latino "in last name only."

The political
repercussions of Lopez' fall from grace will be many, but it will be
interesting to see how it affects that nature of Latino politics in the
Brooklyn. It is significant that these days potentially progressive
political change seems to emerge more from the rubble of exposed scandal
and corruption rather than wholesome and principled civic engagement.
And it is sad to say that even the possibility of something positive
coming from these political disasters is never even assured.

Angelo Falcón
is President of the National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP), for
which he edits The NiLP Network on Latino Issues. He is co-editor of the
book, Boricuas in Gotham: Puerto Ricans in the Making of Modern New York City.He can be reached at afalcon@latinopolicy.org.